Monitoring of volcanic ash clouds can be improved - CTAE's contribution
Published April 26, 2010
A recent study published by the International Space University (ISU) proposes an innovative solution to improve the monitoring of volcano hazards and in particular those caused by the ash clouds.
Prepared in Barcelona in 2008 by a team of 40 young professionals and 14 senior experts from 12 countries, under the chairmanship of Dr. Ed Chester from CTAE and with the participation of two other CTAE engineers, the project had the following mission "To define an integrated framework for early warning and hazard tracking of volcanic activities on Earth using space-based and terrestrial resources". The authors gave their study the title VAPOR - Volcanic Activity: Processing of Observation and Remote Sensing Data.
The VAPOR study provides a gap analysis of existing technology solutions. Specifically for air traffic, it identifies "Lack of timely delivery of warning to aircraft to avoid ash plumes; lack of understanding of minimum tolerable ash plume concentration that aircraft can fly into; and variations in data based on detection methods. For example, volcanic ash in the eruption cloud can rise to the cruising height of commercial airliners in as little as five minutes - but ash plume tracking information can take as long as 1.5 hours to get to the pilots of those airliners".
To address this and other gaps, the report proposes an international integrated data-sharing and analysis framework to dramaticaly improve the information processing and distribution to the aviation authorities and to many other users, both public and private. The proposed system architecture is given in the figure below.
Composed of three distinctive layers, the system would work in a similar way to the existing weather forecasting and information systems for aviation: interface; access and data & information. Within this framework, users from around the world would be allowed access to salient information from ground-based, air-borne and space-based assets and would be provided with data products that meet their individual needs.
The VAPOR report also presents different use cases with their potential benefits, proposes a model for governance, policy and law, tackles the business and financial aspects and suggests future work needed in this topic.
In addition to CTAE, the following organisations contributed directly to this project: CDTI (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation), City of Barcelona, Spanish National Research Council - CSIC in Barcelona and Madrid, European Union Satellite Centre in Madrid, European Space Agency (ESA), Informatics International Inc., NASA Headquarters, NASA Langley Research Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of Bristol, University College London, University of Florida, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), and the World Bank.
The executive summary and the full report are publicly available from ISU's website. (Click here)